Energy Recovery and Economic Evaluation for Industrial Fuel from Plastic Waste

Plasma gasification is considered an environmentally friendly process to convert plastic waste into fuel oil; a prototype system is described to test and validate the plasma treatment of plastic waste as a strategic vision. The proposed plasma treatment project will deal with a plasma reactor with a waste capacity of 200 t/day. The annual plastic waste production in tons in all regions of Makkah city during 27 years for all months in the years 1994 to 2022 is evaluated. A statistics survey of plastic waste displays the average rate generation ranging from 224 thousand tons in the year 1994 to 400 thousand tons in the year 2022, with an amount of recovered pyrolysis oil; 3.17 × 10⁵ t with the equivalent energy; 12.55 × 10⁹ MJ, and an amount of recovered diesel oil; 2.7 × 10⁵ t with an amount of electricity for sale 2.96 × 10⁶ MW.h. The economic vision will be estimated, using the results of energy generated from diesel oil as an industrial fuel extracted from plastic waste equivalent to 0.2 million barrels of diesel oil, with sales revenue and cash recovery of USD 5 million, considering the sale of each one barrel of diesel extracted from plastic waste in the range of USD 25. It is important to consider that the equivalent barrels of petroleum cost, according to the organization of the petroleum-exporting countries' basket prices, up to USD 20 million. The sales profit (2022) is as follows: for diesel with a sales revenue of diesel oil, USD 5 million, with a rate of return of 4.1%, and a payback period of 3.75 years. The generated electricity reached USD 32 million for households and USD 50 million for factories.